


They Know

by Poose



Series: The Reynolds Affair [8]
Category: Hamilton - Miranda
Genre: Adultery, Bad Decisions, Cheating, Children, F/M, Here Goes That Vase, I Suck at Timelines, Implied Childhood Sexual Abuse, James Reynolds is a Shitheel, Maria Deserves Better, POV Alternating, Parent-Child Relationship, Pregnancy, Semi-Public Sex, Sexually Transmitted Diseases, Siblings
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-05-17
Updated: 2017-06-29
Packaged: 2018-06-08 23:16:10
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 8
Words: 19,046
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6878785
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Poose/pseuds/Poose
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Annnnnnd here goes that beautiful glass vase toppling to the ground. I think this will be a chaptered fic and probably the last part of this series? I wouldn't say it's been fun, exactly, but ~illuminating. The usual caveats apply. Everyone is a flawed person here in some way or another to some extent or another, which hopefully is widely understood by my small readership by now. </p><p>(Content warnings: implied abuse, cheating, adultery, unprotected sex, drunk sex/dub-con, some creepy stalker-ish stuff, suicide ideations, implied childhood sexual abuse, STDs. James is limited POV but still. The back button is there if you need to use it!)</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [sheldrake](https://archiveofourown.org/users/sheldrake/gifts).



###

 

He goes with his wife on her work trip to Boston, where the February winds are unforgiving, and provide him with a convenient excuse to stay indoors. The night before she’s hardly in the mood, but he kisses her neck while she stares listlessly at her tablet. Eliza protests when he snakes a hand under her shirt. “Alexander, I told you. I have to go over my presentation again.”

“Baby, c’mon. You’re perfect,” he drops a kiss on the tendon of her neck and rubs his mouth over it. “You’ll be perfect, stop stressing. You gotta relax. Let me help.”

“Shareholders make my stomach hurt,” she sighs, but she yields, eventually, and brings her hand up to cup the side of his face so they can kiss.

 

###

 

James spots a girl who looks like Maria in a neighborhood a few streets over, where there’s a small dog park. The dog has done her business and is waiting for him to pick it up when he sees her. She’s wearing a baseball cap over her ponytail and a pair of pale blue stretch jeans that look good, really good. He follows her for a little while, if only to be sure that it’s someone else filling out a pair of jeans like that. She says she’s working a double, but he hasn’t trusted her for a long time. Matter of fact, he’s never trusted her for a second, even back in high school.

 

###

 

“Aunt Peggy!” shouts Angelica as she runs to greet her at their front door, with Philip, who's not wearing any pants, close on her heels.

“Hey, kiddo!” says her sister with a smile down at her niece. Then to Eliza, “I brought wine, do you want?”

She shakes her head and goes back to reading to Alex. He’s nearly thirty months and his verbal skills are only in the sixtieth percentile for his age group. Daycare isn’t going to be intensive enough to bring him up to where he needs to be, and she’s already anxious about his future in public school. Moving will help, she’s certain of it.

“There’s some creep lurking outside your building,” Peggy remarks, coming into the living room with a glass of red. “You’re sure?” she holds out the glass in Eliza’s direction while the kids swarm around her feet. “It’s a 2013, Ponzi reserve. Good stuff.”

“I’m not feeling booze lately,” she says, and then to Alex, “can you turn the page for Mommy, please?”  
Philip pulls on Peggy’s pant leg and says, “What did you bring me?”

“Philip!” scolds Alexander, as he comes down the hallway. “What have we said? It’s not polite to expect a present every time someone comes to visit.”

She speaks up, seconding the lesson. “Philip. Please apologize to your Aunt Peggy.”

“Mpmph,” pouts her eldest. Eliza stares at him, the threat of a count to three implicit in the look. “Sorry,” he mumbles.

“Come on,” whines Angelica, from the other side of Peggy. “Bedroom. I have more toys there.”

“Yeah,” agrees Philip, glaring at his mother. “This room is dumb, I don’t want to play here anymore.”

Eliza begins to reprimand but they’re already off, tearing down the hall with thumps and screams.

“I don’t have to go,” Alexander says, even as he’s pulling on his horrible jean jacket that he thinks makes him look like Ponyboy. She’s put it in the Goodwill bin at least a dozen times since they moved in together. “If you need a break.”

She turns the next page. Alex squints at the letters printed there and makes zero effort to sound them out. “No, this is fine,” she sighs, “I haven’t seen my sister in forever, and I want to catch up. But if we go out she’ll insist on a bar, and I’m way too tired to even try.”

“If you’re sure,” he says, and checks his phone. He leans over to kiss her on the cheek and Alex on the top of his downy head.

“Can you say goodbye to Daddy?” she prompts, and he bashfully shakes his head without offering a word. Another sigh. From the other room she hears a loud bang, and then Peggy yells, “It’s fine, we’re all fine!” Eliza might want that wine after all. She’d ask Alexander, but he’s already out the door. “Tell George I said hi,” she calls after him.

“Will do,” he says, with a little wave. Alex waves at the closed door the whole time she’s up and fixing her wine. It is good, she thinks as she takes a sip and the tannins flood her nostrils before giving way to mellowness. 

 

###

 

James followed that girl in her tight blue jeans, followed her sweet ass all the way to the lobby of a fancy elevator building, and when she finally caught on, and he’d caught up, he had to keep walking past her in the direction of downtown, to avoid being noticed.

The club is pretty empty for a Wednesday. Peyton comes to sit with him and he buys a shitload of watered down drinks for them both. He pays her for a public dance, twenty bucks, and when his dick is nice and hard he pays her for a private one, twice as much. He goes to feel her up and she smacks his hand away, and when he does it again, the bouncer shows up, and the next thing he knows it’s ten o’clock and he’s being thrown out on his ear.

There’s another bar, another fat-assed bitch looking to be coerced with drinks, and she’s cheap because it only takes a few. They end up at her apartment, where he fucks her bare before they both black out.

 

###

 

Maria does her makeup on the subway, and ducks into a Starbucks on her way to meet him at the bar in Chelsea. She loiters outside the bathroom until a man walks out of it, and she gives him a wide-eyed smile when he holds the door open for her. It stinks in there, but it only takes a second to change out of her scrubs into another dress he bought her; silky olive green with a deep V in the front and the same to match in the back. This time around she forgoes a bra. She puts the dress on over some tights because it’s cold out, the fabric cool against her breasts, and then steps into shoes that are impractical for slush but which she’s got only one chance to wear. Its not like James will take her to experimental theater. A quick glance in the mirror, another coat of waterproof Hypnôse, a gargle with the tap water straight from the faucet, and then she sails out of the Starbucks and into the night.

 

###

 

They’re watching TV. Philip was called into the principal’s office again for biting a boy in his kindergarten, sent home early after his subsequent meltdown. There's a parent-teacher conference to talk about it tomorrow afternoon. 

“Alexander,” Eliza yawns as she rests her head on her hand. Her ears pop with the force of it; she’s so tired, all the time. It’s work, that is so demanding and relentless. Motherhood is the same, but every day she has a new reward, or terror, or combination of the two. “Have you given it any thought?”

“What?” he asks, turning his head quickly to her and then back to the TV. “I told you, I don’t think all-day daycare is the worst idea for Alex, especially once Philip starts first grade. It’ll cost a shitload, though, I don’t know how we’re gonna pay for that unless I pitch something new.”

She rubs the tip of her nose with the back of her hand. “The moving?” she reminds him. “Out of the city. You said over Christmas that you’d think about it, and it’s been months.”

“Oh. Yeah.”

“Have you?” Her eyes are closing of their own accord. He recovers her bare feet with the throw blanket, and Eliza murmurs her thanks. The skin of her cheek is dry from the March winds. She’s long overdue for a facial.

“Have I what?” She should get her phone and add a reminder to make an appointment. And one for the dermatologist. Her annual should be coming up, too.

She coaxes out an answer from him with her eyes closed. “Have you thought about it?”

“I like it here,” he says, and then she wants to protest, that he’d like Westchester County, he would be fine in Bronxville, that maybe in Connecticut, even, they could be an hour out by train from the city, and so much closer to her sister in New London. Angie’s still getting pumped full of hormones and could, she reasons, use her support. Less charitably, she thinks she’s selfish, obsessed, needlessly competitive. A baby is a miracle, not something to be won like the medal from a triathalon. These are cruel thoughts, and Alexander would encourage them, and she’s too tired to laugh at his jokes, so she closes her eyes.

 

###

 

Running. It was her idea, a cover that wasn’t simply another kind of work. Concerts count as work, and they’ve got mutual friends who might see him there, with her. Openings count as work. Writing in a coffeehouse is work.

“Running,” she says, as she looks longingly at his cigarette. He offers it to her but she shakes her head no. “It’s cheap and it gets you out of the house.”

“Smoking gets me out of the house,” he retorts, and then she grins. God, she’s pretty. “Gimme that,” she says, and he hands it to her. She exhales over her shoulder, like she’s being watched, and he kisses her full on her luscious mouth before she can take another drag.

Running turns out to be even worse than he thought it would be for a couple weeks, and then it’s a little better, and then it is better than that. He imagines himself entering and finishing marathons, winning medals. Maybe start small, like a 5K. He can finish a 5K. It wouldn’t be enough to piss off his sister-in-law, though. Fuck it. Let Eliza go toe to toe with her.

 

###

Alex loses time thinking about her. He’s meant to be working, writing. There’s laundry to do, calls to make, playdates to arrange. But instead he stares at an empty document and remembers her. How her bare back was so smooth beneath his lips, how rough the brick wall was beneath their hands. The way the waistband of her tights cut off the circulation starting at his other wrist, and that, combined with the cold, meant he barely felt it when she came the first time. He rubbed her so briskly then, his own nerves dulled, that she yelped out, and when he went to kiss her, she bit his lip in retaliation so hard that it bled. 

 

###

 

A few days later she’s packing for another work trip to Seattle. She’s cut out almost all salt from her diet but she’s still feeling puffy. Wrap dresses, wide legged pants, tunics, all go into her weekender bag. She considers bringing her vibrator, decides she doesn’t feel up to being judged by TSA, and leaves it behind. When she throws up at the airport, once before security, once after, and again on the breezeway to the plane, she does the math, and realizes why she’s been so exhausted. A quick call to the doctor confirms it; they were about to let her know.

When she FaceTimes, later on, he’s obviously stunned with happiness, and mentions that Angie will indeed, be fucking pissed at her. She'd only been off her birth control a few cycles, but that's how she is. They were hardly even trying.

She's elated, and nails her presentation the next morning. A room service steak to celebrate, and then she goes online and starts bookmarking four and five-bedroom houses in Albany.

 

###

 

Maria is on his living room floor with her thighs clamped around his neck and she is seeing Jesus. His face is so buried in her that she faintly, distantly, worries that he might suffocate, and even if he did, she probably would be so far gone as not to notice.

It’s so fucking loud, the noises he makes against her, all slurps and vibrations, and she pushes on his shoulders to make it stop feeling so good because how can it be so much but he doesn’t care; he pulls her through that, annihilates all shreds of resistance and she is broken underneath him. Her lower back arches off the floor and Maria’s orgasm brings with it an awareness that she deserves this, to feel this good, to feel it always, and, the thought comes with a flash of pure clarity, from someone who can love her back the way she loves him.

 

###

 

She’s had a come to Jesus ride on his face and now she’s on top. They're still sprawled on his floor. Maria looks down at him with heavy-lidded eyes, her mouth open so he can see the back sides of her even white teeth from below, and he fits his hands underneath her thighs and his stomach so he can feel the pressure of her body everywhere. She is all tight heat and messy hair and petite curves, and every time she is near him, every photo she sends, every subtle text that pings from her, he thinks he’s never wanted anyone or anything so much in his whole fucking life.

“Touch me,” she demands, and he keeps his palms where they are, flush against her damp inner thighs, and brings both his thumbs up to make a ridge for her to rub against.

He has to tell her eventually, about Eliza. Maybe she won’t care.

 

###

 

“Well no wonder you’ve been so worn down,” her boss says, and then offers her tentative congratulations. Eliza has to swear up and down that she’ll stay on half-time after she takes FMLA and cashes out her vacation. Of course she was tired. Now she’s starving all the time, and Alexander, who is a dreadful cook, humors her. He makes steak on the balcony, in the rain, several times a week. What the kids leave untouched, she finishes late at night, in the cold light of the refrigerator.

This pregnancy is rough so far. She’s dizzy all the time, even with the supplements, and the iron from adding meat back into her diet. It’s worse than insomnia, because she wants to sleep, desperately, but every time she goes to lie down, nausea washes over her. Eliza cannot sit still. She cleans the kitchen, folds the laundry to the hum of public radio, sorts through all the storage bins in the front room, the linen closet, the hallway. 

 

###

Running was his excuse to meet her in the park, but instead of making out against a tree or under the bridge they have a _talk_ that pulls no punches. It sucks. Alex tugs on the knuckles of his fingers over and over again but they won’t seem to pop. Maria thinks he’s an idiot and leaves him there like an asshole. She ignores his texts for a week, and when he dares to ask for a picture or a hello she sends him the emoji of a middle finger. He feels like shit, and writes Aaron a vague email to ask if he takes no-fault cases. Seems like the least he can do. 

 

###

The clinic nurse tells her she needs antibiotics and to inform her sexual partners. When she goes home to confront him, somehow it’s her fault. Somehow everything is always her goddamn fault, and Maria is tired, so tired, so utterly fucking tired, bone-deep exhausted, of being wrong about everything. She calls in to work like she might sleep the whole day away. Who even needs the money when she'd rather cease to exist. That afternoon the dog needs her walk. They have to leave the apartment, and the idea flashes over her that, provided she had the dog, and comfortable shoes, and all the cash in their bank account, she could really find a way to keep on walking.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> (New content warnings / tags added above PLEASE PROCEED WITH CAUTION!!!!)

###

 

Eliza’s taken on the monumental task of wrestling the boys into bed, given that it takes a solid hour to get Philip down these days. The child psychologists all say that _consistency is crucial_ , and for the parents to give _constant and visible support_ to one another. But Eliza says it’s fine, she can handle him, she’ll do it herself. Meanwhile Angelica is happily splashing in her bath with several plastic toys, humming a tuneless song to herself about, he thinks, dinosaurs and nests. He’s letting her wear herself out before he even tries to wash her hair, because she’s afraid of the shampoo, and screams when the water trickles into her eyes. Alex is sitting on the lid of the toilet, looking at his stored cache of text messages, waiting for that moment to arrive.

They are like a gateway for memories. Each timestamp precedes an exchange that led to a meeting that led to sex, in some form or another, the likes of which he hasn’t had since college, when there were no consequences for sleeping around. He had quite the reputation on his dorm floor, at one time, and back then they didn’t care so much about monogamy.

He’s way back in March and remembering her hair in his hands when the blue bars skip ahead _quickquickquick_ like a staccato heartbeat, and there she is, asking him to help her.

“Shit,” he says, the single syllable resonating off the porcelain.

“Swear jar, daddy,” singsongs his daughter, who is way too smart for four.

 

###

 

_hey_

_hey_

_can u meet up?_

_right now?_

_tomorrow afternoon_  
_we need to talk_  
_i need your help_

_okay_

_the park?_

_yeah, the park.  
1:00 our bench _

_[...]  
i’m sorry_

_yeah_  
_i know_

 

###

 

The insomnia has left her at last, and Eliza has reached the stage of her pregnancy where she’s always horny but her tits, which are a wonderful rounded B cup in her second trimester, are absolutely killing her. It’s why, even when she’s on top of Alexander, who’s lying sideways across their bed, she has to keep pushing his hands away as he tries to grope them. 

“Alexander,” Eliza rolls her hips as a warning, “please. Be gentle.”

“I can’t help it,” he gasps out as she finds a rhythm upon him. “That bra does things to me.”

She kisses the fingers of his right hand. “Gentle.” With his hand in her own they move to cup her breast through the pale ivory lace. His thumb strokes across her nipple, and she gasps, as the sensation reverberates all the way down her sternum.

An orgasm is gathering in her stomach, heavy, like a thunderstorm, when she hears her only daughter cough outside their door. “Mommy?” comes Angelica’s voice, “my throat hurts.”

“Goddamn it,” curses Alexander as she uses his chest for leverage to climb off. Her bathrobe is close at hand, and she wraps it around her naked form before opening the door, and stepping into the hallway.

It takes her a long time to get Angelica back to sleep, and then an age to go to the bathroom, herself. Yeast infections plagued her in high school, but she hasn’t had one in two decades. She’ll call the doctor in the morning and see if it’s all right to use Monistat. Even at her most desperate, Eliza refuses to bathe her cunt in raw milk yogurt.

When she returns to their bed Alexander is looking at his phone, his hand moving slowly beneath the covers. She tries to peer at it as she lays back down beside him. “What’re you looking at?”

He startles at the realization that she can partially see his screen. “Jesus, Eliza!” The screen clicks off with a dim blue flash.

She purses her lips, primly. _Men_. Well, they’re allowed to have their outlets. She idly wonders if Angie and Joanne have this issue. It would be rude to ask. But. It’s just a pretty girl, far from incriminating. It could be worse. Alexander is, at the end of the day, hers. Father of her children, the cornerstone of her picture-perfect life. Without so much as a reprimand, she pulls him flush between her legs. His head finds her neck as he rocks into her, and then she cradles him against her breasts as his mouth latches on to her nipple through the lace of her bra, and warmth suffuses her entire body.

 

###

 

He gets to the park a couple of minutes late but she hasn’t arrived yet. Alex hangs around. A couple of cigarettes later, he scrolls back through his texts. Nope, there it is.

_tomorrow afternoon. 1:00 at our bench._

Minutes inch past, their arrival hastened as he checks his phone fitfully. When, by 1:29, there’s still no trace of her, he texts.

_where r u?_

 

###

 

Maria spends a long time picking out her clothes to meet him. She wants to look cute, demure, and forgivable, all at once. Her jeans are too tight, her t-shirts too low-cut. A sundress will only give him more reason to want her. Everything is coated with memories that cling to the fabric like green spring pollen. The clothes form a pile on the foot of the bed and threaten to cover the dog. She raises a wary eyebrow.

In the end she chooses khaki shorts with a decent enough inseam, a striped tank top with its straps knotted in the back. A long filmy cardigan, in a shade too dark to call ivory, and too attractive to be beige, keeps her shoulders hidden from view.

Maria squares her shoulders, leaving the clothes to deal with later. Once in the bathroom, she finds that her hair and makeup cause the same set of issues to resurface. _I don’t want you anymore,_ she wants them to say,  _but you should feel bad that you can’t have me._ She puts on lipstick in harlot red, in pink, in peach, in purple brown. They all feel wrong. Her hair is the same story. A crown twist is too restrained, loose and down begs for a repeat of intimacy. A topknot splits the difference, and she’s working on that, half a dozen bobby pins clenched between her teeth, when the door opens.

It’s James. James. Shit. _Shit._ Sent home early from work for a minor transgression; that cashier was a bitch anyways. He was only being nice, talking to her in the first place. Stuck-up fucking bitch. What business do the customers have complaining about him? Fucking yuppies, moving up here, acting like they own the fucking place.

He’s spoiling for a fight. Surprised to see her, as he puts it, _all done up_. Maria does not look like a whore, even though he calls her one. She is a good person, for all her faults. In her guts she believes this now, knows it to be true. Why it should take the destruction of a marriage, two marriages, for her to realize this will have to wait for another time. He is yelling. Of course he is. Her heart races. Her phone is charging, lying a million miles away on the nightstand in the bedroom. Her text messages are open. Clothes are everywhere, makeup strewn across the bathroom counter. A mess, he hates a mess.

For most of her life, Maria has found it easier to bear by thinking that she’s fallen into a lake. That is why she cannot hear what happens, or feel it, even, for beneath the water everything is refracted, green and blue and painless. James is distorted, a blurry figure on the shore, and he cannot hurt her there.  All it will take is a weight in her pockets, and she will sink like a stone to the bottom. Her lungs will fill with liquid and everything will be cool and quiet and still.

She blinks as her phone rings, its shrill sound slicing through her consciousness. Her lungs fill with air as he heads into the bedroom and Maria, without thinking about anything except her own freedom, grabs her purse from its hook and bolts, out the door and down the stairs. The flat leather soles of her sandals slap against the asphalt as she runs downtown towards the park.

“Shit,” she says, finding him already gone. She paces from the sycamore tree to the perimeter, but he is nowhere to be found. An old man in camouflage, vacantly masticating on his gums, stares at her. Maria flops down onto one of the benches, heedless of how hard she falls. Her head goes to her hands. She’s going to be sick. “Shit, shit, shit.”

  
###

 

The phone rings and rings without an answer. Alex is a coward, too afraid to go in search of her. He's scrappy in the kind of verbal way that's good at high school debate, or remembering song lyrics. When he sees men sexually harassing women he always steps in. But this? Shit, he's afraid he'll get decked. Her husband works some kind of security. He goes to Duane Reade and gets himself a fresh pack of cigarettes and stands across the street from her building. No one comes in or out for a long time. 

Finally, his phone buzzes. He drops his cigarette in surprise. It rolls away as he reads it. 

_if you don't leave her the fuck alone you will be sorry_

He stands there, smoke wafting up by his feet. And now it is his turn to be decisive, to the best of his ability. Alex calls the police to report a domestic assault. He hides behind a ripped up phone booth, watches from a distance as they cart her husband away into a squad car. Resisting arrest, it’s got to be. Aggravated assault on an officer. He seems like the type. Some of her neighbors come out to watch, a fat older woman in a house dress, leaning for support on the shoulder of a younger man who might be her grandson. From across the street he is too far away to hear her curse in Spanish, but he can imagine what she’s saying.

He writes Aaron a second email as he walks back to their apartment, knee deep in the sense of acute shame he feels at having let her stay there for so long. Why couldn’t he protect her?

 

###

 

 _Work._ It’s so mundane as to make her laugh, but she goes to work, shows up four hours early for her shift. She’s about to go sit in the break room and charge her phone, but Gina takes pity on her and gives her the keys to her place, instructions on where to find some spare scrubs.

That night she scrounges change from the bottom of her purse to pay for a vending-machine dinner of hot Cheetos and diet Coke. Eight hours pass with her jumpy as hell, expecting James to show up any minute: at the nurses’ station, in a patient’s room, around every fucking corner.

When her shift ends she bums a smoke off one of the nicer doctors, a tall white guy with soft eyes who’s graying at the temples. He gives her a look like he might be kind, but she won’t believe it for a second. He wants something. Men, all of them, they always want something.

New Jersey is there, though, a bus ride back in time. She borrows the handsome doctor’s phone and leaves her mother a clipped message. Barely an afternoon has passed since she’s shown up on their doorstep with nothing but her purse and the clothes on her back, and Maria already knows this was a mistake.

“Well,” her mother turns to put away a box of chicken-flavored crackers. “If you’re going to be staying, you’ll need a change of clothes. You call those things shorts?”

Maria’s face goes hot. She pulls the cardigan tight to conceal her front and opens the fridge to cover her anger. There are real Cokes in there, a whole case of them, but she takes out a plastic bottle of water instead. The scrutiny has already begun, best to stay on her good side. The plastic cap sticks as she untwists it.

“Can I bring the dog here?” she asks, after she’s taken a drink and gathered her composure.

Her mother tuts into the cabinet. “That dog sheds,” she says, and then turns to squint at her daughter. “Last time you brought her she peed on my carpet.”

“That was six years ago,” Maria insists, “she was only a puppy then.”

“I don’t want to have to get the carpets cleaned again,” her mother says absently, and then heaves a sigh like the mere fact of asking is tantamount to pissing on the floor herself. God, that woman. Clearly refusing to listen, or offer help. What she wouldn’t give to have a parent, one parent, who felt up to the fucking task.  

She takes an angry drink and says, “I’ll see if there’s anything upstairs in my old dresser.”

“I doubt it’ll fit you now,” comes the echo, as she walks away and straight into her stepfather, coming down the stairs. He puts a friendly hand on Maria’s shoulder. She stares at it. It remains there, icy and invasive, the whole time he is talking. He overheard their conversation. He’ll work on her mother regarding the dog. He only wants what’s best for her. She was right to come to them. This is her home. He’ll protect her. He's so glad she's back. They can go to the police station and file a restraining order. She can stay as long as she wants. She will never have to worry about James again. 

 

###

 

All that night, all the next day, he compulsively checks his texts. Nothing. Email — nothing. Snapchat — nothing. The following morning he walks to the cafe where she first caught his eye. He orders a con leche and a guava pastry and asks if the owner if she’s seen her. She hasn’t. Can he leave a message? He can.

On his way home he passes a church, one of the magnificent ones that, like so much in the city, has fallen into disrepair. His fingers are sticky with guava when he lights a candle for her, and another for his son, with his undiagnosable anger —  diffuse, and constant, and exhausting. He sits down in a pew to finish his coffee, as if the mere fact of his presence there will be taken as an intercession to the divine.  


	3. Chapter 3

###

 

When she answers the phone call from the OB-GYN at the office, she’s crunching conversion numbers in the open-plan conference room. It’s pretty empty; she’s working through lunch. Eliza expects to hear nothing out of the ordinary. A woman’s body during pregnancy is a temperamental thing. Crazy stuff can happen. Gestational diabetes, melasma, foot swelling, nosebleeds, heart palpitations. A yeast infection is a minor inconvenience, all told.

“Hello?” she says, and tucks the phone under her chin while she clicks through pivot tables. Her hands slow on the keyboard as the receptionist asks a series of questions that are increasingly invasive. Eliza grows self conscious at answering them in public and eventually leaves her computer on the birchwood table for one of the glassed-in breakout rooms.

_Yes, she’s still there._

_She noticed it a couple of weeks ago._

_Her full work-up isn’t for another ten days._

_Three days. Vaginal._

_No? Pregnancy has that covered fairly well._

_Only him. There hasn’t been another man. Or a woman._

_Is the baby at risk?_

_Of course, her regular pharmacy is fine._

_No sex for six weeks? That won’t be an issue._

_Yes, she’ll be there on the fourteenth.  
_

Eliza texts the housekeeper and tells her something’s come up at work. Can she take the kids out until after dinnertime? A movie? The park? Pizza, even, if that’s what it takes. She can pay her back that night. Alexander is on a deadline, which is a lie that will turn true soon enough. A deadline for being gone.

She rests a hand atop the growing swell of her stomach and stares out the plate glass window at the view of midtown until Marta replies in the affirmative. Her crotch is on fucking fire, and she takes a moment to adjust her underwear. Then she sits her ass back down behind her computer until the pharmacy calls with the prescription. Let Alexander get his own, she thinks, as she packs up her things. She’s fucking done taking care of him.

 

###

 

Eliza is there when he gets back from the cafe. Maria hadn’t shown, but he put in some good work time anyways. Celebrity retrospectives are keeping him in business at the moment, which is good. Bad for the people who keep dying, of course. But for him? Yeah, he’d rather be busy. Gives him less to think about, worry about. His wife is sitting on their couch with the television on, though there’s no sound coming from the silent screen. Her hands are tucked underneath her seat, a childish posture, like she’s antsy about something.

“Hey,” he says, as he locks the door behind him. His computer bag lands on the dining room table as he breezes into the front room. Eliza winces as if on cue. He picks it up and puts it on the chair instead, but her face remains stiff. “You’re home early. Everything okay?”

She wiggles from side to side but doesn’t lift up her arms. “I went to the doctor,” she says. He’s about to sit down next to her on the couch, but her tone stops him short. Instead he scratches the back of his neck and makes a concerned face. “Everything okay? Is it the baby?”

Eliza’s love for him is so warm, gold-tinged and forgiving, that he sometimes forgets how cold she can be. There is a cruel certainty that this is entirely his fault. Is it? He supposes it is.

“Who is she?” she asks. Her knuckles are white against her upper arms. Her perfect face is turned away from his own, like she can’t even bear to look at him. His stomach drops out of his ass and onto the floor. His mouth is as dry as the morning after. He’s sweating like he’s coming out of detox.

“I’m sorry,” he says, because he can’t explain it. What’s he going to tell her, this woman that he adores more than life itself? What can he even begin to say to explain it? It was hot out? You were gone? I was bored? She’s pretty, responsive, beautiful, young, sexy, loud?

“Who,” she repeats. And then, “When.” It’s not even angry. It’s cold. Unsentimental. Ruthless.

“One time,” he lies, and falls onto his knees. He bangs the coffee table on the way down, but it barely even registers. Alex tries to reach for her but she pulls away, tucks herself into the corner of the couch like he’s got leprosy.

“Don’t fucking touch me,” she snaps. _Now_ she looks at him. Her eyes are wet but she hasn’t been crying. Her eye makeup is still perfect, like everything about her. That’s his wife. Perfect. Of course he fucking cheated, of course he fucked up.

“It’s nobody,” he pleads, as his eyes prick hot with tears. “She’s nobody, Eliza, I swear.” When she seems to soften, the line of her jaw quivering very slightly, he pleads with her. Alex has never been above begging. He’ll talk his way out of this, like he does everything else. She’ll listen. She loves him. She knows he loves her. He takes a deep breath and says from his knees, “I love you so fucking much. We’re gonna have a baby, and I got scared, okay? I’m sorry, Eliza, I’m so fucking sorry. I’m an idiot. No, I’m an asshole. I fucked up because I'm a fuckup.”

Eliza purses her lips. Alex waits, heart thudding in his chest. The noise is like a drumbeat in a cavern. Please, he begs, silently entreating her to look at him. This is his only shot at forgiveness. His wife is a Schuyler through and through; they make their minds up quick. Once more he tries to take her hand. The skin of her knuckles is smooth beneath his thumb like she’s just been for a manicure. He kisses her hand over and over again. Hot tears drop onto her palm as he goes for her wrist. She’s perfectly still. Her face is turned away but then, she looks down at him. Her cheeks are flushed, her eyes wet. It’s all right, he thinks with a dizzy rush. It’s going to be all right. He fucked up, she knows he fucked up. She loves him, it’s going to be all right.

And then he shatters when she says the words. “I want you gone. Get out of my house.”

He looks up, her hand still clasped between his own. “Eliza—” he starts, but she shakes her head. “Now,” she says, and sniffs loudly. “We can work everything else out later.” She pulls her hand away and wipes her nose with the back of it.

“But —” he tries to protest. Of course it doesn’t work. He might as well be hurling himself at a brick wall. She folds her arms again and refuses to meet his eye. He pushes himself to his feet, tripping over his own sneakers. 

He hates himself for hurting her. More than that, he hates that he finally got caught. Mostly he’s surprised that it took this long. But that’s Eliza through and through. If it interferes with what she wants to see, who she wants them to be, then she simply refuses to acknowledge it. She deserves better now, and always has. So he goes without a fight, because he knows this to be true. Alex shoves a bunch of shit in a backpack: laptop, chargers, a couple of books he’s meant to review, too many t-shirts and less underwear than he’d like, because he was supposed to transfer it from the washing machine to the dryer, and he hadn’t yet.

The television is still on when he leaves the apartment. He walks to the A train. Alex has nowhere to go, and it's his own goddamn fault. 

 

###

 

Of course the visit to the cops is horrible. They’re okay, overall. Treat her nice, call her ma’am, offer her burnt coffee and a female caseworker. Her mother refuses to accompany them to the police station. “What will people think?” she says, aghast at the mere suggestion, and then she vacuums the living room for the second time in as many days. When they leave she is wearing blue rubber gloves and scrubbing at the already-spotless stovetop.

Work is her salvation. Maria picks up every shift she can — she’s uptown, in Harlem, in Washington Heights, back in Jersey. She says yes to everything she’s offered: split shifts, morning shifts, nights. The cafe gives her a couple hours here and there, her boss lets her take the stale pastries home. These live in her locker at the hospital, and along with sodas swiped from the doctor’s lounge, sustain her for a week at almost no expense.

The salon she worked at in high school is still there, and they remember her, greet her with hugs and kisses that remind her there were good things here, too. They want to help, so when she’s not riding New Jersey transit, not waiting in that godforsaken line at Port Authority, not standing behind a cash register pretending to be happy, not emptying bed pans or starting IVs or handing out pills, she sweeps up piles of hair, straightens magazines, disinfects scissors and brushes and hair clips.

James, blessedly, doesn’t show up at work. He comes to the house, though, once when she’s not there. Her mother won’t tell her what happened. But when her stepfather says he won’t be back, she believes him. That weekend she lets him take her to T.J. Maxx and buy her some new outfits, a queasy weight in her stomach the whole time. He buys them hot dogs on the way home and makes her promise not to tell her mother.

There is money in her bedroom. Every paycheck she gets is withdrawn immediately and goes into a shoebox. Her tips from the café, the crumpled twenties her stepfather gives her when her mother’s back is turned. She keeps meaning to open an account somewhere but she’s just too goddamn tired. When she sleeps, when she can sleep, it is with that box clutched between her arms and a desk chair wedged beneath the doorknob.


	4. Chapter 4

###

A month passes, then another. Come Labor Day weekend the city is emptied of its inhabitants once more. Jimmy and his wife are fleeing to their place in the Hamptons, where the air runs fresh, the dogs are as well-groomed as the people, and the end-pf season parties will be legendary. “You really won’t join us?” Dolley asks sweetly as they head out the door, “Ina has said an extra plus one is fine, if you feel up to it." 

“Tell Jeffrey he's a lucky dude," he deflects, and she laughs graciously. The same could be said for Jimmy, who's made out pretty well from Dolley's party-planning career turned lifestyle brand empire. 

In truth he wants the place to himself. He wants to eat cereal over the sink and go without pants for three glorious days, pretending that their downtown apartment is actually his own. He's got to figure out a new living setup.

Jimmy is such a fucking mother hen, worse than Eliza had ever been, always hovering. Asking Alex if he felt up to working yet. Did he have the next idea? Did they want to put together a pitch? A biopic of Prince would sell well. They could tap the memoir route, maybe get some of the travel book marked. Revisiting his childhood home with an eye to influencing debt policy? A month on a deep-sea fishing boat? Carnival in Rio? Barbados? Trinidad? Or if he wanted to hit a little closer to home, then maybe something could come of all this. Had he considered that?

“Think about it,” Jimmy had urged, over gin cocktails at Balthazar. “And who knows, maybe it will be a path back to Eliza. I know she has it in her to forgive you.”

“The very idea is sordid; that's some gross hack shit. Besides, nobody is going to want to read about my affair,” he’d said, dismissively. “Eliza? That bridge is burned,” he’d said, glumly, and swallowed the last of his drink. “Eliza is a Schuyler before she’s anything else, and that family? They don’t change their minds. If she was going to forgive me, well. I had one shot.” he shook his head and looked around for another drink. The bartender was preoccupied with a group of pretty girls in their twenties, fresh off their desk jobs and on the prowl for marks to buy them drinks. “It’s over,” he’d said, and rattled the ice in his empty glass. One of the pretty girls, a redhead, looked up at the noise and then immediately looked away. Her eyes had lingered on Jimmy for a moment — well-dressed, put-together, arms for days — before espying his wedding band. Alex wears his as well, even though that’s hardly what’s keeping him from scoring. He’s too scrubby to be a catch even for the evening, who cares what he can deliver. Girls only care about men who are rich, or failing that, hung, or failing that, at least tall. Zero out of three, so why even try?

He misses his wife. He misses his fucking kids, who he’s been seeing three times a week. Once at their — now _her_ — place for a few too-brief hours on Monday and Wednesday nights, and on Sundays, when he hauls them around the city like every other separated schmuck. He’s lived here most of his adult life, and only now has he managed to make it to the weird museums. If nothing else, his inevitable divorce will be educational. Any day he expects the papers to be served to him. Any fucking day now.

They’re upstate for the holiday weekend. Peggy and Joanne haven’t unfriended him on social media, and through them he pieces together her life without him. She's into side braids and long sundresses, and has bought some new hats. Her Instagram now requires approval in order to follow her. He checks it at least a dozen times a day in case she lets something slip. Even her Pinterest account is locked.

Come the last dog days of September he gets a text that makes his heart light up, and then extinguish almost immediately. They arrange to meet at a cafe in Union City that has claimed a narrow strip of sidewalk, optimistically, as a patio. He arrives first and gets the table. She shows up ten minutes late, saunters over to where he’s sitting and takes one of his cigarettes without even asking, lights it herself. Her hair is down. She’s lost weight but is still unbelievably pretty.

She seems better. Older. This whole thing has aged him a fucking decade. If it wasn’t for the fact that he’s basically homeless and staring down the barrel of divorce, he could almost think that he imagined her. The whole thing has the quality of a dream, thick and misremembered. Did it really happen like that?

“So,” she says, and exhales a plume of smoke over her shoulder and away from the window. “Here we are.”

Alex looks around, scratches the back of his neck. “How are you?” he asks, softly. Her hand is on the table, her ring finger, bare. He covers it with his own. Just a second passes before she slides it away, not unkindly.

“Your friend said he’d represent me in court,” Maria tells him, and ashes on the sidewalk. God, she’s so fucking pretty. “But it’s gonna cost trial money that I don’t have.”

Alex is quiet for a moment. He gestures for the cigarette and she passes it over. There’s pink lipstick on the filter. It tastes like her, and he shivers a little at the sense memory. His dick thinks it’s being summoned, and he has to quickly call to mind Eliza’s tears, his children’s sad faces, the fucking disappointment in Jimmy’s eyes when he'd showed up on his stoop with a backpack slung over one shoulder and a piss-poor excuse for being there.

He smokes silently, nimble fingers scratching at his overgrown beard. He should have gone to the barber. It always looks ratty when he tries to take care of it himself. Eliza would have reminded him. Without her as his anchor, he’s drifting into aimlessness.

“I have an idea,” he says, and passes the smoke back across the table. Maybe he could do it. Maybe it would be a way back. Maybe it would solve two problems at once. Three, if you count getting Jimmy off his back. 

“I’m not running away with you,” Maria tells him, with a proud tip of her sharp chin. God, he would marry her, right this minute, if that’s what she wanted. Go back to the islands. Eat fruit, drink rum, fuck all day and dance all night. Fuck Eliza and the kids and the co-op and his in-laws and his career. Fuck all of it.

Alex takes a breath, allows the somewhat cleaner air of New Jersey to fill his lungs. He couldn't and she won't. “Just hear me out,” he says, and stirs his cafecito to dissolve the sugar. “Okay? Listen to me for one goddamn second.”

 

###

 

A suitcase of her nicest clothes is waiting for her a few days later when she goes to the cafe for her morning shift. It’s a pain to haul back through Port Authority, but there’s real bras that fit, and he's managed to get her favorite pair of workout shoes and, thank God, her diffuser. 

The favor he does her is solid. He sends pictures of the dog on a boat in the Hamptons. The dog on the beach. The dog eating what looks like raw steak and wearing a bandana. The dog, Maria thinks, as she shoves her phone in the back pocket of her jeans and goes back to sweeping up dead hair from the floor of the salon, seemed to get the best part of the whole deal. 

She meets her lawyer. Mr. Burr is a suavely dressed man only a few inches taller than her. He stinks like money but he treats her like a person. James has his own counsel, lord only knows how he's paying for it. There's always someone there now, if they have to meet face-to-face, and usually the lawyers do it, because of the restraining order. Mr. Burr is finishing up some papers when she blurts out, "Can I ask your advice?" 

One side of his face moves minutely. "Is it legal advice, Mrs. Reynolds?" 

She swallows, throat dry, and says, "It's about — our mutual friend?" 

He arches one eyebrow, silent. It must be a lawyer thing, because he offers nothing in the way of encouragement yet she spills everything. 

"How much is a book advance, usually?" she asks, and tells him what he'd proposed. 

 

###

 

Kicking out Alexander turns out to be a terrible decision.

Naturally she’s livid, naturally he'd deserved it, and everything else besides. He deserves to be in a shabby furnished apartment in fucking Bed-Stuy — fuck, in _Bushwick_ — infested with bedbugs. But it is hard to be so pregnant and so goddamn lonely. She wants it to be like it was towards the end of her last three pregnancies: he’d order them Indian, mild because her sense of taste always heightens at about twelve weeks. They’d watch something stupid, and Alexander would be amusing while he rubbed her feet, and would read to her from _What to Expect_ , every night, before they fell asleep. And he’d sing, too, to her stomach, and tell their unborn child about Senegalese hip-hop, and Wilson Pickett, and Johnny Cash. 

The baby kicks and kicks against her empty stomach. Six weeks out from her due date and Eliza might as well be gestating a bomb. She gives him smoothies, green juice, the occasional piece of fish. Her feet are so swollen she’s taken to wearing orthopedic flip flops, even to the grocery store. The skin around her eyes is tight and drawn with fine lines. Her cuticle have split over into her nail beds. Single parenting leaves little time for spa treatments.

“Adoption is so complicated,” complains Angie, over bagels and appetizing at her place. Her suggestion, because getting three kids dressed for brunch after a week of CRM disasters sounds like a special level of hell that nobody deserves. So her sister and sister-in-law are there, Angie nattering on about the agency they decided to go with, and the girl they’re meeting in a few weeks. The kids are still in their pyjamas at 1 o’clock. Eliza has managed to throw on a dress and some lipstick, but her feet are bare, her toes unpolished, her heels, cracked. Angelica has cream cheese in her hair, which means bathtime will have to involve shampoo. She’s a screamer when it comes to getting her head wet. She’s already dreading the prospect of having to do it.

They know she should care about their baby, her baby. She should care about the apartment, which is a wreck, clothes strewn in corners, toys covering the floor. Marta is too old to handle the kids plus the housekeeping, and has suggested a few girls, young ones with more stamina, who could replace her full-time. Eliza can’t look at any girl without feeling fucking sick to her stomach. Even though in her heart of hearts she knows that whoever she is, she’s unlikely to be one of Marta’s relatives from Greenpoint. But it hardly matters. Every single one makes her wonder. Is that her? Is that? She walks past them on the street, curvy girls poured into artfully ripped jeans, with nails like talons scratching away at their cell phones. Her? That one? She’s pretty. That one? No, wouldn’t be her, too tall.

She hardly notices she’s nodded off at the table over the drone of Angie trying to explain, condescendingly as ever, what legal adoption means to her middle child. Take them, she wants to say, God, just take them all and leave me here to sleep forever.


	5. Chapter 5

Sex has always helped her to induce, but masturbation lacks that effect. Maybe if she could get off, she thinks, throwing aside her Hitachi in frustration. Movement might do the trick, the midwife had said. So she lugs herself out of bed and paces the apartment hallway. One foot in front of the other, cradling her giant belly, the other hand pressed to the small of her aching back. It’s as if her body has decided to feel all the pain her heart can no longer accommodate.

She won’t tell Angie, or Joanne, what she's feeling. They would simply tell her what she knows, intellectually, to be true. Yes, he's a shit. Yes, she should hate him. Even Peggy doesn’t know that she misses him. How she sits just outside the frame when he talks to the kids on the computer and tries to gauge his state of mind simply by hearing the tone of his voice. He’s writing, she knows that much, hasn’t even intimated what it might be about. So she misses that too, the early days when he’d be germinating, brimming with excitement, and every night after dinner he’d run ideas past her as they worked together to unload the dishwasher.

My husband, she’d say proudly, if anyone asked after Alexander, is working on his next book. He’s so sorry that he can’t join us, but you know what it’s like when the muse strikes. He’ll be here next time. Oh, have you read it? Yes, he’s very talented. Yes, he is that smart. Yes, he does have a regular byline in the _New Yorker_. I’ll be sure to tell him you said so.

What does she get out of it? Intellect by proxy, wit by association. A circle of people she’d never have encountered in her own sheltered life, artists, musicians, people that her father might disparigingly refer to as bohemians. A friend, someone to share a laugh with. A shoulder to cry on when it all got to be too much. He was there for her, even when he'd fucked around. He was there. 

 

~*~

 

Eliza took the kids upstate through Labor Day, and then back to the city and their regular routine. Her sisters are there, helping. Let them go. He has to write; there is so much work to do.

He has written everything down. Two versions what happened, and they happen to be true in equal measure. He fucked a girl and he fucked up, those are the only constants; everything else is negotiable. Truth is like history, pretty much everything depends on who’s telling it. And so if this is his story, then he’s hardly culpable. But if it’s her story, then he’s the one who’s to blame.

Will the story bring his wife back, or push her further from him? Does she want the truth, maybe, if it means she can lord it over him for the indefinite future? That she might. She’s always been so fucking proud that he can’t help but want to wound her there. _Yeah, you’re beautiful, but her? She’s fucking hot, sorry. She only had to look at me once and I was gone. She made me feel alive in a way you never have. I know you loved me, but this was maybe even better? I’m sorry I hurt you, but I’m not sorry, I’m really truly not._

Should he lie? _A girl, one time, a few times only, a mistake. She was pretty. It was hot out. I was stupid, I’m a man, I’m an idiot, I’m a fuckup. You know all that already. We’re all like this._

Her little dog is a constant companion as he paces beside the pool, or walks the length of the beach. The tourists gave him a wide berth, since he was in the habit of muttering to himself during the walk. He wants to write something that will redeem him, but he cannot do so without turning her into a caricature. Yet if he writes her onto the page as she was to him, hips and pout and desperation, then she will hate him too.

He writes by the pool in the watery light of late autumn. The kids FaceTime him every other day and talk his fucking head off. You can’t tell a child to shut up when you have work to do, but he’s relieved at the general reprieve from being around them. They demand attention, engagement that he simply can’t dole out right now. It’s easy enough to love them from afar. He keeps an editing window open for the times when they inevitably press the pause button, or hang up on him.

The sun rises over Montauk when he hasn’t been to bed yet. He buys cartons so he won’t have to leave the house. He eats once a day, a huge takeout meal, which he figures will sustain him through the night. He writes by the pool until it gets covered for the season, and then he writes at the kitchen counter, sitting in a barstool with a too-low back that digs into his spine. The guest bed, the dining table, an armchair, the living room floor. There’s a cafe in town that caters to locals, and their coffee is shit but it’s dog friendly.

A third story emerges from the previous two. She wanted it. She seduced him. She is to blame for everything that happened to him, and to them. She is a demon with red-painted nails and a cunt like a Venus fly trap. He couldn’t do a goddamn thing, could he? He was helpless to resist her, just another schmuck. Any man would have done the same thing in his position. Any man at all.

There’s a dog sitter on speed dial, and a bag already packed for the hospital. He spares a tiny thought for Eliza. Wonders if she’s keeping it together with her sisters always around. If she’s holding off on serving papers until the baby is born. Any day now, he thinks, and doubles down on his words.

When the phone call comes he brings his laptop with him on the train. He runs through his external battery, and on the cab ride to the hospital, his backup battery. Angie bars him from the delivery room, so he parks himself near an outlet, a shitty coffee dispenser at hand, and hunkers down for the long haul. Peggy tries to play nice and catch up, but he pretty much ignores her. Fuck them all. He has work to do.

The baby, when he’s permitted to hold him at last, is tiny and purple, with squinty eyes and a shock of straight dark hair. Eliza has already named him without so much as asking his opinion, but John is a fine name, a simple one that can stand up to the weight of a hyphenated surname. She can’t take that from him without a fight, at least. He’ll go to bat for his name, even if that’s all he has. It belongs to him, and to his children. The newborn, John, has both their names on his birth certificate. Maybe she'll change it later, after the divorce. 

 

~*~

 

Maria gets sick and she really can’t afford to. She washes her hands so many times at the cafe, rubs sanitizer all over them at the hospital, that they’re raw and chapped in the winter air. The divorce is materializing. They have no assets, at least, and with the admission that James had cheated, too, it’s turning out more smoothly than she’d ever hoped. There is, unfortunately, the price of Mr. Burr’s retainer, and the paperwork, reams and reams of paperwork, each piece of which needs to be researched, verified, attested, filed. Each piece has a cost associated with it, and the zeros steadily add up. She dreams about money; Alex gave her some, and more to come. On Mr. Burr’s advice, she asked for a percentage. And a contract.

“What the fuck?” he’d said, but she’d insisted, held her ground. After all, it affects her too. God knows what her mother, her sister will think when they read all about it. But a huge part aching piece of Maria wants to say forget it, keep the money. I don’t need it, I don’t need anything from you. But take me back, even if only for a night. It would be so easy. He would have her in a heartbeat.

But Maria is her own woman, and if she has needs, then those take a backseat to her goal, which is to get as far away from the tire fire of New York City as she can. There’s a bank account now, growing steadily even with the money she’s been giving her mother for letting her stay at her place. Her stepfather slips her bills that more than make up for it.

She gives a ton of head over the next couple of months, but it turns out all to the good. The handsome white doctor turns out to be called Nathan. He’s 43, divorced, originally from California, did his residency at Michigan. He can’t dance to save his life. His cock is the best thing about him, save for the dual head shower in his condo and the fact that he lives smack in the middle of Morningside Heights and she can walk to the hospital. By spring she’s able to stay at her mom’s no more than three nights a week, and Gina lets her crash with her on Fridays so she can avoid Port Authority. Night shifts help, too, because she can sleep when they’re at work. Her encounters with them are minimal.

Sex with the doctor is fine. When he swipes his tongue across her it’s barely perfunctory, hardly enough to get her juiced up. His cock is big, though, thick and long, curved away from his body. Sucking it is hard work, but he is always pretty gentle about it. He likes for her to ride him with her ass facing him, and that works for her, too, the pleasurable angle of his dick pressed against her as she moves in nasty circles on it. Usually she gets off, so that’s good too.

If he refers to himself Daddy sometimes when he’s about to come, or if the wrinkly old white women in his building suspect she’s the cleaning lady and he doesn’t bother to correct their prejudices, or he ignores her when they pass in the hospital’s hallways, her arms laden with a full bedpan, him on his way to a free lunch with the blonde drug reps, in their stilettos and pencil skirts, Maria sucks it up, because she does what has to. It could be so much worse.


	6. Chapter 6

They meet face-to-face and it is wretched. Back when they started dating, back in in high school, James was charming. Funny. Charismatic. All the girls wanted to fuck him, but he'd liked Maria, and she'd liked the way she felt safe with his arm around her. He didn’t used to look at her like he wanted her dead, or, at the very least, as if it would be by his own hand. She used to think he'd protect her, but all he did was suffocate her, in the end. But it’s too late to regret now. All she can do is end it. He stares at her from across the table and it might as well be his hands around her throat, that's how hard it is to force air into her lungs. She digs her fingernails into her own palms and closes her eyes, as if she can will herself to California, into the ocean, to start a new beginning.

Her heart slams against her ribcage as she signs with the heavy pen, then he does. In a blur their lawyers are standing, buttoning up their suit jackets with smooth pleasantries and reaching across the slippery oak table, shaking hands. Maria hears her name as if through a fog and turns to face the sound. Mr. Burr takes her by the elbow, his grip assured but light as he steers her from the room. He puts them both in a cab and takes her straight back to his office, where he sets her on the couch and pours her a generous measure of something strong and expensive. Maria drinks, and coughs violently, the burn trickling down her throat and into her chest.

She cannot seem to stop shaking, nor can she remember how to breathe. The room is huge; the room is tiny and sideways. His voice is too loud but the words don’t penetrate. The only reason she can tell he’s talking is because his lips move. He pours her another and she takes it without thinking.

“It’s over,” he says, and this cuts through her fog. “Maria, it’s done.” Maria looks into the glass with its two inches of amber liquid with a name she can’t pronounce, and drinks.

 

###

 

“No way,” Eliza tells her younger sister, who has been pestering her for weeks now to make a profile on some godforsaken dating site. An app? God, what a nightmare. She's heard Peggy's horror stories, and her single girlfriends'. Dick pics galore, verbal abuse, and that's if you're lucky. She's got four kids, one of whom has behavioral problems, another still in diapers. The middle two are okay, but Eliza cannot bear the thought of bringing a man home who isn't their dad. What will she tell them? What will she tell them if they get serious or, more likely, break up? Better to stay celibate. Work out, focus on work. She's got a vibrator. 

She keeps silent about these manifold concerns and says, matter-of-factly, “Who in their right mind is going to want to date a separated thirty-five year old with four children, one of which isn’t even a year old yet? A baby? Men don’t date women with babies.”

Peggy looks at her with pity. Okay, yes, the Hitachi is starting to chafe, and it would be nice to have a conversation with an adult for a change. “What?” she demands. “Stop looking at me like that. Tell me.”

“You know, Eliza,” Peggy begins, sounding remarkably like Angie, “I’m only trying to help. And it’s not like you’d really be using it for dating, right?”

“Sure,” she answers, taking a cautious sip of her Riesling. If you’re down to a scant four ounces a day, then best to go slowly and savor every mouthful. “Wait, what?”

Peggy drains her glass, reaches for the bottle across the coffee table. “Eliza,” she says, as she pours the remainder right up to the brim. Eliza’s lips purse, sourly. She would like to get drunk. Blackout, stupid, bad decision drunk. But can she? No. See: the aforementioned four kids. The career. The body. And now, the single parenting. “Far be it from me to tell you what to do—”

“Wow,” she cuts her off, because seriously? Her too? “Angelica isn’t even here, but it’s good to see you taking up the condescending bitch mantle in her absence.”

“Wow,” Peggy repeats in the same snarky tone. “Tell me how you really feel.”

"Did Mother put you up to this?" 

"The hell?" Her wineglass is suddenly empty, but Peggy isn't sharing what's left. Why is everyone so selfish? "I care about you, Eliza. I don't care if you can't hold it together all the time. I'm not Mom, Jesus." 

Eliza’s face goes hot. “I’m sorry,” she says, almost immediately. Even at her breaking point she can’t not be nice. That’s who she is. Nice. She squeezes her eyes shut and tries to compose herself.

“It’s okay,” Peggy says, after she’s swallowed down the abortive crying fit. “I meant more like, I’m not telling you what to do, because it’s your life and you’re the person you are. But.”

But.

_Why haven’t you filed for separation yet? Why don’t you put yourself back out there? You’re young enough to try again._

And then her mother’s voice, full with shrill condescension: _you could find another man, darling. Someone who can keep you in better style. A good provider for your children. They really should be in private school. And if you insist on living in the city, then why so far uptown?_

 

###

 

They meet face-to-face and he looks better than he has any right to. His eyes are bright, his cheeks smooth and freshly shaven. “Hey you,” he says with a wide smile as she crouches to scratch her dog under the chin. Poor thing needs a bath, and for her coat to be shaped, her overgrown nails trimmed. “Hey sweetheart,” she coos, “is Alex taking care of you?” She gives a little grunt of pleasure and licks Maria’s hand. She's still wearing an American flag bandana, familiar from some of the pictures on the beach. 

The dog seems like all she has left of home. Nathan is allergic, and she’s not in Jersey enough to make it worthwhile keeping her there. Maria can’t afford to owe her stepfather for another favor. This is the best she can do for now.

“I have a draft for you,” he says, and presses the paper bag that contains it into her hands. “It’s — it’s honest, I think?”

That, she supposes, when she has a spare minute to read the thing, is one way of putting it.

It is beyond honest. Brutal, more like it. Unflinching, in the way he portrays her. At least he had the decency to extend the same treatment to himself, though not, she notices, to his wife. She gets off easy from what Maria can tell, and frankly, the clueless bitch doesn’t even begin to deserve it.

She misses her stop on the train and has to double back; she’s late getting clocked in from her fifteen because she’s holed up in the cafeteria, reading it. Nathan walks past the nurses’ station and winks at her, thinking he’s being cute, and she ignores him, preoccupied with her thoughts and how he talked about her. There’s a coffee shop a few blocks away with bad coffee and decent omelettes, and that’s where she sits and finishes the damn thing.

“You need anything else?” asks her waitress, who’s come with a coffee refill. She makes sure to give a pointed look at her unfinished rye toast.

Maria shakes her head, picks up one of the cold triangles and tears away a corner with her back teeth. The chewing takes forever, but she swallows it down with hot coffee. And then, like a dog worrying a bone, a child picking at a scab, a woman who's made a lifestyle out of trading one bad situation for another, she flips over the loose pages to find the worst sections, and reads them again, and again, and again.

Does he call her a bitch outright? A homewrecker? That’s on him. That’s something. But all the other things? _Attention seeking, lying, manipulative, oversexed, stupid, naive?_ She wonders if it will negatively affect her employment chances in the future if she punches him the next time they meet. 

 

###

 

He’s uptown again, where he belongs. It’s easier to be close to the kids. Three days a week after school, before Eliza comes home from work, he watches them. They play dinosaurs, they read books, they build pirate ships. The baby has Eliza’s full cheeks and his own sad eyes.

“Sorry little man,” he says, as baby John cries and cries and cries. He loves his children. Alex would take a bullet, step out in front of a train for these four black-haired demons, he would, he would. But then when Eliza comes through the door, at six o’clock, or seven if she’s been to yoga, or seven-thirty if she’s been at SoulCycle, and it is with tremendous relief that he passes them back to her.

Sure, he might stay.

He might help with a bath, or read a bedtime story. A few times they have things to discuss and so he hangs around until the kids are in bed.

If he orders them takeout and they eat it at the table while talking about summer camp, or Philip's anger issues (less frequent now, but they're calling him "spirited" in the diagnosis, which only sounds like a good thing), or who's paying how much of the new Marta's salary, that's just adults being adults. They've always been good at parenting together; Eliza the one who sets schedules, packs lunches, makes notes about their development. Alex is the fun one. He buys them pizza and lets them stay in their pyjamas all day. 

She doesn't kick him out a couple of times, and he falls asleep on the couch they bought at West Elm nine years ago. Their first big purchase as a couple, when he still thought his opinion counted for something. She steered him around to the couch she'd preferred, a subdued gray twill, and did it so masterfully that it was only when he was watching her fill out the form for delivery that he'd realized he hadn't wanted that couch at all, not even a little bit. But Eliza liked it, and it made her happy, and all it was, in the end, was stuff. 

 

###

 

They meet again at a bar that’s too sterile to be cool. His hair is smoothed back into some semblance of a bun. He looks pleased with himself, lit from within. Sporting that same arrogant confidence that drew her to him in the first place, all those months ago.

“So?” he asks, when they’ve ordered. Her purse is on the table, the manuscript in its paper bag sticking far out from the top. It’s been her constant companion these past few weeks, but it is with relief that she passes it back over to him.

The brown paper has wrinkled from being carried around with her. There is coffee on at least one page, where she took a sip — too hot— and the napkin she shoved to her lips couldn’t quite catch it all in time.

“Did you fuck your nanny?” is what she blurts out, after their drinks have been delivered. He arches an eyebrow at her and takes a thoughtful sip from his martini glass. Wordlessly, he shrugs, like that absolves him somehow.

“You did,” she says, her voice flat. God, he’s repellent. That poor fucking girl. Twenty-two, fresh out of college, didn’t know a soul in America. Away from her family for the first time in her life. And his wife? She knew. She let it happen, didn’t care to tell him to stop. She can see it all now, and she detests him for his lechery, and her, this woman she’s only seen pictures of on the mantle and the fridge, her she loathes unconditionally. Maria knows what happens to a girl who’s ignored like that. _Lies_ , her own mother had said, on more than one occasion, _you’re a goddamned liar._

“Jesus, Alex,” she mutters, and pushes aside the tiny straw. Maria has dodged one hell of a bullet with this one. A couple gulps of gin and tonic restores her enough to face him again, and then she picks up the little lime wedge, squeezes it into the glass.

He takes another drink, drums his thumb and ring finger, still encircled with its wedding ring, against the heavy wood of the table, alternating between the two. “But what else?” he prompts, and she could fucking scream at his self-absorption. “What did you think, like, of the writing?”

“I don’t know,” she responds, flatly. Ten minutes into this bullshit and she’s already sorely needing a second drink. Their waiter is nowhere to be seen, though she twists her head this way and that, hoping he’ll materialize, practically falling off her stool in the process.

His tone is bitchy as hell when he prompts her for more detail. “What do you mean, Maria, that you don’t _know_? Have a fucking opinion, okay? Own it, why don't you? Tell me if it’s not any good. I can take it. Just tell me. It’s bad? Too experimental? Choppy? Hard to follow? Jesus, give me something.”

What a self-absorbed prick.

Maria sighs. The ice in her glass slides in one large mass to the top and hits her square in the mouth. She rattles a chunk loose and chews on it. “Look,” she says, and pauses to collect her thoughts. “I’m not a big reader. It seems fine to me, the writing or whatever? It’s hard for me to be, like, objective? Besides, I don’t have much to compare it to.”

“There’s money riding on this for you too, you know,” he snaps. Slams his lips closed, that tight line men get when they feel they’ve been insufficiently respected.

Fine. She’ll stroke his ego if that’s what it takes. She needs that money, even if it destroys what little she has left of her reputation in the process. Maybe she’ll change her name when she gets to California. She certainly doesn’t want to have that association with James anymore, now that they’re no longer married.

"It's really good," she says, and lowers her voice to a seductive hum. Play dumb, fine. "You're so smart, honestly. It goes right over my head." 

“Well,” he starts, and — reassured that he’s still got it, launches into a mini lecture about what mood he was trying to accomplish, and temporality— time, he means, it's a big word, she probably hasn't heard it before — and the confessional mode, which dates back to Augustine, Rousseau, but has a whole ancillary tradition in Catholicism, and he was _raised_ Catholic, so maybe it’s innate, this need to spill his guts everywhere —

While he’s ranting the waiter breezes past her, trailing attitude in his wake. Maria says _excuse me_ in a loud and clear tone, but he sashays away without even pausing. At this rate she’s better off going to the bar herself. She hops down from her barstool and swipes her purse from the tabletop. The manuscript in its brown paper he can keep. He should burn it, except. Except it's her way out, too. “Ladies room. I’ll be right back?”

“Sure thing,” he says. His brow furrows as it dawns on him that he didn’t get to finish talking. He can put a lid on it for five fucking minutes. 

The bar is on the way to the bathroom, and it’s easy enough to swing by. She orders a shot of Sambuca, which she pays for with cash and downs with a wince, and another drink to the table, on his tab. The bathroom fixtures are stainless, same as in Nathan’s apartment. She plops onto the toilet and pulls out her phone.

He’s texted in the interval, an doctor's wall of it, with capitals and punctuation and everything. She knows he dictates them. Says he’s going to be a plus one at a fundraiser for a colleague whose wife isn’t feeling well. He’ll be home to change and then over to the park for the evening. Can they take a rain check on meeting up? Can she stay in Jersey? He won’t be home until late, he doesn’t want to wake her up.

Her second drink is waiting when she gets back. Alex opens his mouth to rattle on again, but she has to say one thing, first. “I can’t believe,” she says, her voice rich with disgust, “that you wanted to jerk off with my _hair_.”


	7. Chapter 7

“Alex,” comes Jimmy’s voice, booming like a foghorn through the pea soup of his thoughts. “Alex, are you listening to me? There are decisions to make here. I need your input.”

He had been listening, kinda. And okay, thinking about the cute waitress at the restaurant a few blocks over where he’s taken to having dinner a couple times a week. Short girl. Dark curly hair. Seriously _killer_ legs. They restaurant isn't too shabby either. They do a solid orecchiette with Italian sausage and purple sprouting broccoli, a few salads that aren't terrible, a wine list with half bottles, which works well for a single guy. He’d gone there on a date with a girl from the internet who was cute but vapid, and had a laundry list of annoying particularities about her food. The waitress had been patient with all her dumb questions, didn’t so much as bat an eyelash at the request for no salt in the pasta water. He tipped her really well and went back the next week. The girl? Never called her again. Dating, it turns out, is pretty fucking liberating.

“Yes,” he says, looking up from where he’s apparently been playing with the dog and a worn purple chew toy in the shape of a fish, its surface embossed with lines meant to represent bones. “I’m totally listening to you. But tell me one more time, just to be sure.”

Jimmy sighs, an exasperated gust that seems to fill the room. Hell, he should try dating. It might relax him a little bit. His wife seems like she’d be okay with an open marriage. “I'll repeat. Are we giving you a plus one for the launch party? And does Eliza want to come? Dolley seems to think she does.”

“First I’ve heard of it,” Alex shrugs, and gives the purple fish a sharp yank. The dog digs her little front paws in and growls. Her nails click against the parquet floor. “You’d think she’d have mentioned it to me, seeing as I talk to her at least ten times a week.” On the phone, usually. They have a pattern again. _Can you? Do you mind? I’ll be by later. Did they have dinner yet?_ Three times a week, minimum, but sometimes more like four or five, because she’s working out a lot. Soul Camp? Boot Cycle? Some shit that involves being out late on school nights and flowy t-shirts with words on them.

But that’s only part of the story, as it turns out. Jimmy continues, “We can get her an invite though, and a plus one. If she wants to invite a date. Or a friend, I guess. Isn’t she seeing someone?”

Alex drops the chew toy and the dog, surprised at the sudden lack of resistance, tumbles backward. Then it scampers off to hide under the brown leather armchair where Jimmy is sitting, and gnaws at the corner of the fish with its stinky back teeth.

“Is she?” he asks, because this is news to him. “Eliza? Dating?”

Jimmy glances down at the dog, who is drooling suspiciously near to his loafers, and edges his foot closer to the chair leg. She huffs in annoyance. They sound kind of alike, come to think of it. “No? Dolley seems to think so.”

He scoffs. Dolley sees romance everywhere. Eliza isn’t dating. She isn’t. She wouldn’t. “Oh, that’s different, I thought you actually knew something.”

“In any case,” Jimmy says, with a final disapproving look downwards. “I need to know by Monday afternoon, okay?”

“Sure,” Alex says, and beckons the dog over. She looks at him suspiciously, but gets up, stretches, and saunters over with the toy once more. They resume tugging. “Sure, I’ll ask her.”

 

###

 

Would that she had time for a spa weekend, or a full week away from the city. That would be heaven. Leave the kids with Alex, or the nanny, and just go. God, a week in Taos, or Tahoe. Scottsdale, even. Kirtan, wheatgrass, hiking, lymphatic massage, cellulite treatments. No artificial light, morning meditation, afternoon tantric workshops and hot mineral springs. Vegan everything, dawn light, orange and pink sunsets, rock formations. Bring her journal, that she’s been writing in religiously every day, and let a decision come to her.

Or rather, come to accept the decision she'd made ages ago, which was to forgive him. She’d fried all the mix CDs he made her in the microwave, watched them spark and crackle into oblivion, but it didn’t matter. They’d all been backed up years ago on computers, external hardware, thumb drives. She could still listen to them. Usually in her office, an hour or so after lunch. Door closed, headphones on, and a short, sniveling cry that was hers and hers alone.

She’s read dozens of blogs, talked to her therapist. Eliza knows what she wants, but she refuses to let herself believe it to be true. Him? _Still?_ After all this?

What she’d wanted was a week to herself in a dry climate. What she’s settled for is a four-hands massage with ylang-ylang oil and sweet vetiver, a keratin treatment, a complete bikini wax, eyelash tinting and, to round the whole thing out, an oxygen facial. 

In her day-to-day life she’s settled for signing up for as many exercise classes as one woman possibly can attend while still working full-time, fucking her trainer (massive incentive to get in the best shape of her life, quite truthfully, but dear God is he an idiot), and relentlessly Kegeling, with hard plastic balls and pill-shapes she keeps in her bedside drawer. Alex is on good behavior, watching the kids and following instructions. He comes to her place, their place, because the apartment he’s taken, which she still can hardly bear to think of as his own, isn’t really set up for kids. He’d made a few half-hearted attempts at child-proofing, but his coffee table was sharp-edged, too dangerous for them to play near. He falls asleep on their couch, her couch, and she’ll sit next to him after the kids have gone to bed, drinking a cup of chamomile tea and staring at the fire escape across the street. Pretending that none of this ever happened. Sometimes she thinks about waking him up, bringing them into her bedroom and making it theirs, again.

When she shows up at his party it is worth it, worth it, worth it. Everyone’s eyes are on her as she undoes her wrap. She’d chosen pale blue, a simple sheath dress that recalls nineties Calvin Klein. High-necked, form-fitting without, thank God, being vulgar. Demure all the way to the hip bone and then slashed to almost the top of her thigh, on the bias. It looks great on its own, even better with the silver Grecian wrap belt that she’s paired it with. Her hair is in an updo, painstakingly labored over with the curling iron even though it won’t hold for more than a few hours in the summer heat.

Eliza nods at familiar faces, chin held high. Everyone knows all her dirty laundry now, but fuck it, fuck them all. She looks spectacular. She’s the hottest woman here. However they define success, then this is at least part of it. Eliza Schuyler-Hamilton has always risen above the hoi polloi.

Let them look. Let them think that Alexander was the fuckup for cheating on her, because she is wanted, gorgeous, desirable. Fuck him for calling her frigid in his stupid tell-all with the pretentious bullshit title. Fuck him for claiming he needed to cheat, was _driven_ to cheat because he needed to get his dick wet, and couldn’t be happy, like normal people were, with a dip once or twice with a stranger. He had to find one of these vulnerable pretty girls who thought he was better, smarter, kinder than he was, and wear her down the way he eventually wears everybody down.

Like hell she’s frigid. She’s a mother of four kids with worn out nipples, and involuntary urination when she laughs too hard. Frigid was what Alex considered code for _parental exhaustion_ and _anal only on_ _special occasions_ , is what frigid was to him.

She doesn’t see him. She sees Jimmy, George, people from the magazine, columnists from the paper, a couple musicians that have crossed over into being friends. An artsy crowd, and she has fuck all to say to them. But she's there, smiling her demure half-amused smile, and looking around for her husband. It's his launch, you'd think he'd be easy to spot. 

“Damn, girl,” was what Dolley said, as she came towards her, and hooking her arm through Eliza’s. “Good on you. Glad you showed up.”

“Where is he?” Eliza cranes her head until she spots the bar, but he’s nowhere to be seen. What's the point of making an entrance if it passes without notice? Maybe she should leave and walk around the block, come back in fifteen minutes.

“He’s around here somewhere,” Dolley says, putting an end to that idea, and steers her in the direction of a  “Let’s get you a drink.”

 

###

 

They're in a coat room, unused in the summertime. Her back pressed against the wall, his hands on her waist. Maria is distantly aware that she’s saying don’t don’t but her mouth is all over his, his hands rove all over her, and she forgot what it was like. How could she have forgotten this? Was she angry enough to pass this up? He’s no worse than any other man. Hell, at least he’s honest with how base he is. At least he fucking owns it.

She owns his ass, too, in this way at least. He never thought much of her as a person, sure, but as his piece on the side? He'd run in front of a city bus for a chance to get with her. 

And now, how she wants to push him onto his knees and straddle his face; the way he wraps great pieces of her hair around his hand and pulls until her scalp tingles.

She rubs her nose against his, their hands clasped together in front of her heart. “Come home with me,” he is saying, the noise from the party seeping in to their little hideaway. 

“I can’t,” she protests, even as his hand is finding its way under her skirt. She wore the dress he’d bought her what seemed like decades ago, and maybe it had been a mistake, tempting him like that. Showing up here on an invitation he’d only offered to be kind, because she didn’t belong here, not really. The women have gray streaks in their hair, serious faces and heads tilted like owls in their clear-framed glasses. The men can’t seem to figure out if she’s a waitress or a prostitute, but they look all the same.

“You look fuckable as hell,” was what he said, as he’d snuggled up against her while she was waiting for a cocktail. Maybe he was drunk, or she was, intoxicated by her own audacity.

That book? It's about her. She's the other woman. Ruined his marriage, salted the earth. His wife, her husband. Set it all aflame. Burn it to the ground. Drown them both.

Maria hates him with every fiber in her body, but her body still says yes, yes. God, _yes_.

“God, Maria, you look so good," he says now, seductive as he ever was. "Come home with me. I have my own place now.”

“Alex,” she says in weak protest, balling her fists up against his chest as he plays with her over her panties. She wore ones she knew he liked, and who cared if the lace showed through the sheer fabric of her dress? She showed up for this, him. She showed up here for one reason, and that was to fuck him one last time. To get fucked, honestly. 

Why?

Because small wiry arms lifting her up, cupping her ass and leaning her against the wall. Because his flushed face, and those heavy-set eyes, and how when he looks at her, she sees a want that will destroy her so completely it is all she can do to say no.

Because she is leaving, she is already gone from this place. Her big-dicked doctor, and her mother’s mistrust, and endless concrete, and the garbage-stink of the city, and the skyline, and her dog, even, if it comes to that, because her sister seems cagey about taking them both in. _I was never here_ , she thinks, because once you leave New York you cease to exist, really. If you're somewhere else you might as well be dead. 

 _You ruined my life,_ she might say. _You ruined my life and it set me free_. But those are words, meaningless. Better to stay silent and to kiss him back. 

Better is his face against her neck and his lips against her neck; her name in his throat, on her throat. His clever fingers, musicians’ fingers, hands that could belong to a surgeon. Warm and nimble, unspeakably precise.

“Jesus,” he breathes against her ear, and she shudders at the damp warmth of his voice. He is hard against her leg but she leaves him untouched. It isn't about him. It never really was. He's incidental, an accident. A roadbump, like he's always been. A thing she needed to do to move on with her life, and she no longer needs. But. Maria wants, she wants, she wants. 

“Okay,” she says, when she’s rubbed off against his hand, warmth suffusing her whole body, head spinning. She wobbles when he sets her down. His eyes are dark; there’s a bulge in his pants, only seeming large because he’s wearing clothes that fit his body.

“I have to stay a little while longer,” he tells her, without dropping her hands from his own. He brings one to his mouth, then the other, kisses them both in turn. “Guest of honor and all that.”

“I get it,” she says, swinging their arms in tandem once, twice, and then letting him kiss her again full on the lips. Her lipstick leaves a smear against the corner of his mouth. “You’re famous,” she laughs, and kisses him with tongue.

“Vast overstatement,” comes the muted response through mashed together mouths. Breathless, they break apart a few moments later.

“Take my keys.” Cold metal pressed into her hand. “I’ll be there soon. Don’t have too much fun without me.”

She turns to go. He slaps her on the ass, grabs a handful of it. Maria shrieks, and lets herself be kissed once more. His hand wraps around her wrist, holds it useless, just level with the top of her head, and he squeezes, squeezes, and she barely even flinches.

He leaves first, straightening his suit jacket, smoothing his hair down. She follows a few moments later, watches as he is intercepted by a curvy woman with natural hair and a pretty woman, dainty almost, with flawless skin in a pale blue dress. They exchange kisses, both cheeks, three times, and Maria realizes, as she places a perfectly manicured hand on his stooped shoulder, that it is her. 

Their eyes meet. The woman's, the wife's, narrow, a funny little crease between her eyebrows as she tries to place Maria. She feels her cheeks heat and turns from the room, down the stairs, into the street, the keys clutched in her sweaty palm and no way to return them without making a scene. 


	8. Chapter 8

You wouldn’t think it, but you can actually get a lot done on the train. He writes longhand on the fancy tablet with its handwriting recognition software. It took some time to get the character recognition right, but it seems to be working okay now. Currently he’s dicking around with the early drafts of some short stories. Things about technology, music, porn. So far nothing worthy of the _Paris Review_ , but he’s way out of his element in fiction. Still, it’ll be easy enough to change them into essays after the initial wave of rejections if he gets no traction.

They pass small towns with innocuous sounding names — Pleasantville, White Plains, Tuckahoe — and stunningly high property taxes. The tablet sits there dark, unused since the first few minutes of the journey. He rolls his shoulders out, leans his head back against the two-toned blue pleather for the last few moments to himself.

He hurries to his office from the train station, twenty minutes, give or take — though calling the shit room they’ve stuck him in an office feels way too generous to the department. He’s pretty sure it’s a repurposed supply closet. It feels totally temporary, and the piece of copier paper stuck to the front of his door is literally being held there with yellowing Scotch tape. So yeah, a visiting appointment stretched into a two-year lecturer contract with a possibility of renewal, and still he’s in a supply closet. Okay, so the money’s shit, but the health insurance isn’t, and they need that family plan. God forbid more than one kid need braces or he’ll be forced to sell a kidney on the black market.

He pulls his jacket out from his satchel when he’s close, though he waits to put it on until he’s in the building’s stairwell. Otherwise he gets too sweaty, and he doesn’t want her to see him like that.

She’s waiting for him outside the door. There’s a hard chair that he pilfered from a classroom in the hallway. Ignoring it, she’s chosen to sit on the floor, gangly legs stretched out while she texts. Young people really are engrossed in their phones, he thinks, as he approaches her. Like, he does it too, but at least has the sense to put the thing in his pocket on campus. He’s seen two people eat shit on account of not looking up: a girl in gray sneakers who twisted her ankle, a boy in a polo shirt who hit a blue light box with his temple.

There’s a pink Band-aid on her left shin, its edges graying where it’s been picked at, an otherwise unsightly blip on the smooth expanse of bare skin. Her head is down and she’s got earbuds in, so he lets himself take in the sweep of her legs to where they disappear under her army jacket. Her jean shorts are barely visible underneath, and the edge of a tattoo he’s never seen the whole of peeks out from the frayed edge. He lets his eyes linger there, then coughs to let her know he’s arrived.

“Sorry to make you wait,” he says, pulling the keys from his pocket and fiddling with the door. The jangling noise makes her look up at him, _finally,_ and she flashes a smile as she takes one earbud out. Her whole ensemble aims at bohemian. Her teeth, though — perfectly even, gleaming white — speak of preteen orthodontist visits on her parents’ premium dental insurance. He, wouldn’t you know it, still smiles with his mouth closed, self-conscious of his crooked teeth, a surefire sign that he never got braces.

A rebellious phase, he decides, as he opens the door. She’s what, twenty, twenty-one? About the right age for it. Not quite figuring out who she is, really, merely knowing that she won’t, can’t, categorically _refuses_ to be like her parents. Hence the tattoos, the Creative Writing major. The obvious flirtation with a teacher twice her age.

“I don’t mind,” she says, and drains her coffee cup as she comes to stand. She’s about his height in flat boots. All right, a little taller. She licks her lips and looks around for the garbage can.

“I can take that,” he says, and relieves her of the cup. His student smiles again, bright and honest. God, she’s so fucking pretty. _Twenty,_ he reminds himself. _She’s a goddamn child, you idiot._

“After you,” he gestures to the open door. She squeezes past him through the frame. Her thigh comes dangerously close to caressing his own, but he can’t move any further away, even if he tries. He shuts the door behind him.

 

~*~

 

Eliza’s got sunglasses on to hide the swelling in her cheeks. It’ll subside by the time she makes it into the office. There aren’t any marks from the syringes, but she’s got to let her skin settle down before the event this evening. She shouldn’t have kept it so late, but between ballet recitals (Angelica) — swim lessons (Philip) — and Alex’s child psychology sessions — when else would she find the time?

Traffic has usually died down by ten thirty when she heads into the city, but today there’s construction, a whole lane closed off, that means she has to wait a while. She drums her nails on the steering wheel and is about to turn on NPR when her phone rings.

“Are you sitting down?” Kim blurts out, before she’s even had a chance to say hello. “Because I have something for you. Fair warning, okay? You won’t like it.”

“I’m stuck up by the bridge,” she says, “but yes, sitting down. In the car.” Then a note of suspicion creeps into her voice. Kim doesn’t rattle easily, but she sounds shaken up. _Shit._ “Why?” she asks. The car moves forward a couple of inches. A dented burgundy minivan is trying to edge in beside her. She rides the bumper in front of her, glares at the other driver as best she can with a frozen forehead and sunglasses on.

“Okay, so the _Elle_ piece,” is how she begins, and already Eliza already knows how this sentence ends. Jesus Christ. She’s going to have to give up on mainstream press entirely if they don’t knock it off with the insinuations. You’d think they’d have moved on by now to some sordid tabloid princess. A reality TV star, a pop singer. Lord knows there’s no shortage of them out there.

It’s in the rider. Top of the contract. Every. Single. Time. You want a profile of Eliza Schuyler-Hamilton (and she kept his name — well, she’d _had_ to, for the sake of the children) then you better damn well ask exactly zero questions about you-know-who and _that fucking slut_ as Eliza always privately thinks of her. And if it’s in the write-up? If it’s even casually alluded to by the rookie doing the profile? Her Instagram will flare up with nasty comments like eczema. Unfailingly. Even if every single one is a picture of a test batch, a mood board, or her herb garden. Even on carefully cropped pictures of her kids, even, because people — here she pounds the horn with her fist, though it changes nothing — are well and truly horrible.

 

 

 _what a dick_  
why would anyone cheat on you you’re so pretty eliza  
men are the worst  
i wish i had your life!!!

 

With the occasional _you look like a frigid flat chested bitch_ thrown in to spice it up a bit. 

Traffic opens up just enough for the black Toyota she’s tailgating to surge ahead. The gap is quickly filled by the minivan nosing its way in. Eliza leans on the horn again, a resounding blast that fills her ears. The driver gives her the finger.

“Goddamn it,” she says, and honks again. The van’s brake lights flash on and off, on and off. “Make up your fucking mind, asshole.”

“You okay?” Kim asks, when enough time has passed for her to regain her composure. “Look, it’s only a throwaway line, you know? I think they thought they were being clever.”

“Do they mention the kids?” Eliza asks, because that’s her breaking point. The hazards of being a successful female entrepreneur who lives in public, on the internet, she can handle. Anything else she can spin or ignore. But goddamn it, her children stay out of it. They never asked for this life. She glares at the minivan, the dust on its rear windshield thick enough to write in. Slobs.

“Hang on,” Kim says, tapping on her keyboard. “I’ll double check. I don’t think so, though.”

Eliza holds her breath while she awaits the answer. Traffic inches forward as she crests a small hill. From there her field of vision opens up: a sea of red taillights stretching all the way into Manhattan.

 

~*~

 

He halfheartedly apologizes for the state of his desk, but there’s nowhere else in the tiny room for all his crap to go. It’s organized chaos, which his wife will never understand and so keeps sending the cleaning lady into his home office to tidy. Every time she does that he loses an hour of work trying to figure out his printouts, the multiple notebooks he has on the go, each one stuffed thick with index cards. The tablet was supposed to replace all that, but he likes the detritus.

Ideas, phrases, concepts. Doodles, line art. Lines from advertisements, song lyrics. He writes everything down, no matter how insignificant it might seem. Every idea has the potential to contain a germ of genius. Or cash, that would work too. What he’d give for a bestseller. But like, a critically acclaimed one. Prestige would be nice, money even better. Though any proceeds would go straight into college funds, therapy, fucking orthodontist payments. Of course he loves his kids, but hot damn if parenthood isn’t just one long, joyless drain on your finances.

“Have a seat,” he says, picking a stack of response papers up off the hard wooden chair and for lack of a better place to put them, adds them to the piles on the desk. Well, they have to be looked over at some point anyways. He’ll do that after she leaves.

When he turns around he’s greeted by the sight of her taking off her own jacket, tossing it over the back of the chair casually. The skin of her shoulder casually reveals itself as her sweatshirt slides off her shoulder. Bra strap, tank top, something is underneath. Black, a hint of lace. God. _Twenty, Alex._ He struggles to keep focus as he himself sits behind his own disaster of a desk.

“So,” he says, with a forced nonchalance. The fabric slips down, she pulls it back up. It's hellish. “What can I do for you today?”

She starts talking — the reading they had week before last — and her mouth is moving and she tugs up the shoulder of her sweatshirt, recalcitrant as hell, fucking flimsy shit, she should leave it where it falls — and hell, he can guess what she wants. They seem to come around in spring semester asking for rec letters. Jobs, grad school. She’s what, a junior? An internship, then. Does anyone at the magazine owe him a favor?

He could make a few calls, drop some emails. Alex still hoards his old connections for the inevitable times of leanness. It wouldn’t be too hard. Put her name out there. George is a notorious cheapskate but she could get a byline, couple hundred bucks for clickbait. _My summer abortion_ or whatever the fuck chicks write about.

Fuck, she’d be so grateful, too.

Her eyes all glassy with the excitement, the potential for going viral. He could take her out, next semester, when she’s officially not his student anymore. They could celebrate at a wine bar. Prosecco, sourdough toasts with fig jam, their legs pressed against one another beneath the table. 

Her hair is pretty cute right now. One side is shaved down and her curls are two-tone, bleached at the ends. If he were to wind it in his hand it would be a little rough around the edges, thinned out and porous from the bleach. He wonders if she has a boyfriend, if he pulls her hair, if she likes it when he does. Or if she’s into girls, instead. Aren’t all college kids experimenting? Fuck. _Fuck._

There’s rules and regulations about this sort of thing. He’d read the Handbook when they gave it to him in his welcome packet, a thick spiral-bound document outlining every possible contingency. Thrown it in a bottom drawer and forgotten about it until earlier this semester when he’d been looking for a binder clip. It was laid out there pretty plain. Black and white, page 172.

_Faculty members may not engage in relationships with students whose academic work is currently being evaluated by the faculty member. While both parties may consider the relationship a matter of mutual consent, the imbalance of power and authority and the potential for manipulation and misunderstanding inherent in such relationships can undermine the freedom and equity of the academic and work setting._

The girl, Shannon, is asking him a question. Her shoulder is covered up again, but now, worse she’s pulled up a bare knee and rested her chin upon it.

“So what do you think?” she says, hopefully for the first time, and Alex swallows. There’s a lump in his throat. He looks at her hands, her hair, her face. His bookshelf, the diplomas on the walls. Anything to avoid what he imagines is happening in that shadowy space between her legs where her shorts are clinging..

“Um,” Alex says, and shakes his head in what he hopes passes for a sagely manner. He completely missed the last two minutes. Five minutes, tops. Before he can come up with a follow-up question that will hopefully trigger his memory as to what the hell she was going on about, his phone buzzes on his desk. It rattles the response papers.

“Do you need to take that?” she says, and tilts her head to look. Alex looks down as the photo flashes up on his screen. His wife in profile, a beatific smile playing about her lips, the killer sunset of Keawakapu lighting up her hair. Now _that_ was a good trip. They went snorkeling, and got couples’ massages, and she’d let him fuck her in the ass four times during the ten days they were away. Said it made her feel like a virgin again, so that was a win for them both.

“Hey,” he answers, turning away for a modicum of privacy. Trying to sound casual in front of Shannon. “What’s up?”

“Hey,” she says back, sounding a million miles away. “Something’s come up.”

“You okay?” he asks, eyes roving over to where Shannon has pulled out her own phone and is scrolling through it with a barely suppressed smile. Boyfriend? Girlfriend? Goddamn she’s adorable.

“Shit went down in the profile,” is all she says, and that means they mentioned something they shouldn’t’ve, and _fuck,_ she’ll have to be placated later on. “I need to help with the damage control. You’re gonna have to handle dinner and homework tonight.”

Alex tries not to pout. It’s supposed to be his night off. He gets Tuesdays and Saturdays and she gets Thursdays and Sundays. Fridays the nanny stays late and they go out.

“Can’t you work on it at home?” he whines, and then reins himself in before his student can hear him sounding so pathetic. Alex clears his throat, decides he’d better not come across as too supportive either, or the lies he’ll tell later won’t land. _We live separate lives. She’s free to do what she wants, too. It’s only for the sake of the kids that we’re still together. I never really loved her._

“Alexander,” she says, and then curtly, to someone else in the room, “Just delete it, Kim. Block every last troll if you have to.”

“Eliza —” he says, because she sounds genuinely rattled. His wife, she of the unshakeable composure. It must be a shitshow, then. “What happened?”

“I have to go,” she says, her attention already elsewhere. “Love you.” She hangs up the phone before he can respond in kind.

“So I was thinking —” says Shannon, picking up right where she left off. He’s distracted again, only instead of thinking about what her o-face might look like, he’s stumped on what the hell he’s gonna feed the kids for dinner. Maybe he’ll just do pizza. Mac and cheese from the box. The smaller ones will need a bath, though he might get away with using wet wipes if he can help it. His student looks at him expectantly, and he blinks a couple times to distract himself from the look. “ — could I arrange an independent study with you to work on this essay more? Like for next semester?”

“Oh,” Alex says, taken aback. Sure, that’s his job and all, but he was really looking forward to extricating himself from the supervisory role. The _Handbook_ had been pretty clear on what was allowed with current students. Former students, though, they were fair game. “I mean, wouldn’t you rather stick with your advisor for that? She’s really the academic expert, can get you up to speed on...theory, or whatever.”

“If you’re too busy —” she says, her pretty mouth frowning, and fuck, she looks totally disappointed. Alex can’t have her thinking badly about herself. _Focus,_ he reminds himself. She’s still your student.

“Of course not,” he says, and opens his arms expansively, leaning back ever so slightly in his chair. “I’ll check with my chair to make sure I can enroll you.”

“Cool. I really appreciate it, Professor Hamilton.” She stands and reaches down for her bag. Its brown fringe brushes against her leg, wipes across the tattoo on her upper thigh. His head goes a little fuzzy wondering how far up it goes, if it reaches up to where her panties cut across the crease. Goddamn it.

Beneath him, the chair wobbles. He reaches for the desk to steady himself. “Please,” he says, as she opens the door and heads out. “Please just call me Alex.” He’s not just some old guy, he wants to scream after her. He knows music! He’s smoked pot with Killer Mike!

“Bye, Professor Hamilton,” she says, ignoring him completely. And then she’s gone.

Great.

**Author's Note:**

> Huge, huge huge thanks to both [iniquiticity](http://archiveofourown.org/users/iniquiticity) and [sheldrake](http://archiveofourown.org/users/sheldrake) for helping me out with this hot mess of a story.


End file.
